The Lantern

And so she held her latern high aloft
a beacon in the ebbing night.

*EDIT 2/25/05*: I brought down the contrast so it's a bit closer to the original painting. Unfortunately, you loose some of the color to the tree branches, but was the best balance I could manage.

Last semester, I took a class on the history of print making and the whole first half was dedicated to Japanese prints. This semester, I have the same professor again for history of women artists and while I was waiting for class to start a few weeks ago, I started sketching. The Japansese prints were still fresh in my mind, but then thought I'd give the idea a bit of a twist.

There's some important iconography in here that is easy to miss if you don't know what to look for. First, her kimono is crossed the oposite direction one would normally wrap a kimono. This is the way it would be wrapped for a burrial shroud. Second, the longer sleeves such as on this kimono are for younger women. I thought it was appropriate to make the embodyment of death an adolescent as death is child-like and arbitrary by nature. Also, being a spirit being and god-like, I toyed with the idea of giving her the layered kimono of a noble, but decided against it since death knows no class. Her hair is part styled, part loose since death is order and chaos all at the same time. The rest I think speaks for itself.

I have not fully decided if she is truly death, or a servant of death, or even just a wandering soul. I think that's something best left to the viewer, anyway

Medium: Gouache paint on bristol board, inking done with silver acrylic ink and Gelly Roll pen. The border is scanned papyrus paper. Details of the face and kimono can be found here: [link]

note: I chose Fantasy over the Macabre/Horror gallery for this as by devArt's definition, that catagory is for pieces reflecting the horrors of death, pain, fear, etc and I don't really think there is anything horrific about this.